1,000 to be rescued from stranded cruise ship

The Mona Lisa's captain had agreed to evacuate the ship after unsuccessful efforts to free it from a sand bank off Latvia's coast, coast guard officer Ruslans Kulesovs said.

The coast guard will evacuate passengers and crew onto two naval ships, which will then sail to Ventspils, a port city in northwestern Latvia, Kulesovs said.

He could not say how long the evacuation would take, nor could he specify how many crew would remain on board the Bahamas-registered vessel.

Mona Lisa was on its way from Kiel, Germany, to Riga with 984 people on board when it ran aground early Sunday on a sand bank about 17 kilometers (10 miles) from the Latvian coast, officials said. The cause of the accident has not been determined.